


The Solution on the Shelf

by GearboxDraws



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/F, F/M, Forensics, Medical Procedures, Menstruation, Multi, Murder, Poison
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 22:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20142730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GearboxDraws/pseuds/GearboxDraws
Summary: (This is a WIP but I don't know how to mark it as such)So I had an idea about a concept that never shows up in crime shows or books, so I decided to write a crime story myself to include it~A man is found in a mall dumpster. There are no visible signs of foul play. However, people who die of natural causes usually don't show up in easily accessible body dump sites. The team is pushed to use the scraps of flesh they have left to put together a crime that isn't completely written in the bones. Maybe the useless facts from Mr. Nigel-Murray will even come in handy....





	1. A Body Found

The sirens had long since turned off when Dr Temperance Brennan arrived at the scene. It was early morning, the sun had barely showed itself over the horizon. Crimes always seemed to be reported at odd hours of the day. Almost like bodies were always dumped in the dead of the night.

Red and blue flashing police lights made for a suboptimal view of skeletal remains, barely visible in a public mall dumpster. A knee showed itself there, potentially parts of a ribcage there, the skull somehow had fallen half under the dumpster appearing to have been partially crushed by the dumpster. A faint humming of an old melody seemed to float into the air below the loaded waste bin. But the song seemed to be the least of their concerns at the moment.

Agent Seeley Booth quickly pocketed the notebook he was writing in and walked away from a frenzied garbage truck operator when he saw his partner cross the police tape line. The driver was very shaken up as he told his account of what happened that morning on his usual run. Shaken enough that Booth believed he was not involved at all. [He took down the drivers name all the same. Some people are good actors.] He closed the notebook as he approached his partner. Most of his notes were based on observations of the behaviour of the driver and assistant, and he knew how Dr Brennan, "Bones," to him, felt about psychology. So his report stayed purely factual.

"So the man says he found the body when he was operating his truck and lifting the dumpster with the big-" he roughly gestured to the mechanic arms used to lift the dumpster "- and panicked when he saw the skull roll out. Dropped the dumpster immediately, and called me, and I called you, Bones. Saw there was no flesh, so it became your expertise."

Dr Brennan furrowed her brow. "Don't call me Bones."

She approached the skull on the ground. Anyone could see from a mile away that her mind was already running too fast, analyzing it. "The crushed skull will make it difficult for Angela to recreate a face. Time of death is… unclear. Where is Dr Hodgins? I need his analysis of insect activity."

Almost as if he was summoned, a man stuck his head out from beneath the dumpster, and the humming stopped as he took off his ventilator mask. Well, that solved the mystery of the source of the faint singing, at least. "This dumpster is a gold mine of insect activity. Unfortunately for us, that means time of death will be a little difficult. There's a little bit of every kind of waste here, and it looks like they all fed on the victim. Food waste, defective products from stores, and everything a shopper could possibly have with them. Isn't it exciting?" He cleared his throat, and his eyes darted forward. He altered his tone and cleared his throat? to be more serious and professional. "Ahem. It could be awhile before I have a definitive answer on time of death," Dr Hodgins reported before putting his ventilator mask back on, under the dumpster. The humming returned, a more modern melody now. It was nearly unnerving how excited he was for this all.

Dr Brennan nodded, not even noticing how Dr Hodgins was behaving. "I can't see the whole body. There's far too much evidence here and samples may be insufficient, or the FBI techs may miss something. We will need to-"

"Bring it all to the lab!" Agent Booth cut his partner off, and walked back to his FBI team, giving instructions to various lab techs with hard earned authority. Various people started to rush around, following through with their instructions.

Dr Brennan walked off the scene, looking over her shoulder at Agent Booth. "Tell me when it's at the lab. There may not be much flesh to you, but I work with only bones. Next time don't waste my time before I can assist in a case."

She did not give an opportunity for a response before she got into her personal vehicle and drove away.

Dr Hodgins, who at some point had crawled out from under the dumpster, gave a low whistle and a sideways look at Agent Booth. Agent Booth shot a glare that said, 'not happening, Bug Boy.' Dr Hodgins shrugged the glare off, and climbed into the dumpster with a smile of a man far too excited for his job. It was more interesting to work with a variety of insect activity than to fuss over difficult to define male relationships. Hard to say how much time he would have here before the dumpster was moved. May as well make the most of it.

~ ~ ~

Not even two hours later, Angela Montinegro was in her office, pouring over her latest painting, an abstract face with about five perspectives on it, with subdued colours that conveyed a very empty emotion, one you can't seem to put your finger on. This was the kind of work that truly mattered, work that made people feel. It was a true shame that it wasn't what she could afford to spend most of her time on.

The familiar beep of someone stepping onto the forensic platform drew her out of her office, reluctantly placing a paintbrush down into a mug of murky water. The water was almost completely opaque. It was hard to keep track of time when art took over.

The smell of what could be an old alley and rancid food hit Angela's nose, causing it to wrinkle in protest. The man she loves was nearly skipping beside the dumpster that took up too much of the platform for her liking. As much as she loved Dr Hodgins, there was some things she would never understand. He threw a smile her way, and she gave him a bemused smile in return. It was at least nice to see one of them took full joy in their work. His side bag clinked slightly when he walked, no doubt full of far too many insect samples that she would hear all about at home tonight.

Trying to focus on her work, instead of home life, Angela looked over the rest of the platform. There was half a skull on a large petri dish and... a lot of confetti- looking bone beside it. At least there was no flesh or bugs left on the remains... a courtesy they didn't always extend to her. She had been very sure to make it clear to the rest of the team over time that she did not work with flesh. If they wanted a face, they needed to present a clean skull. Looking up from her anticipated next task, Angela saw the intern of the week. Or however long the case lasted.

Mr Nigel-Murray smiled at Angela. "Always a pleasure to see you! We uh- cleaned the skull for you, hoping you could remodel the face. Dr Brennan is very anxious to have a name for this victim." The man never seemed to fully stand still, and he was constantly fidgeting. No trivial fact this time, though. He clearly was fussing over impressing Dr Brennan.

Angela raised a brow at the young intern. "There is barely more than one eye and half a jaw here to work with. You'll be lucky if I can get anything off of it." She looked closer at the skull. One eye socket was intact, and about one cheek or so. There was a portion of the lower jaw intact, albeit completely separate from the rest of the skull. Then there was flat pieces here and there, though it would need a "squint" to make sense of it. 

All the same, she gave a tired sigh to Mr Nigel-Murray. "Tell me something unusual, this face will be hard to reconstruct."

His eyes widened, as he quickly shifted his weight to one side, then the other. [People rarely asked for his trivia.] "Oh! Uh- did you know that the terms superior and inferior in regards to the body have nothing to do with function, and actually are indicators of location?

Angela smiled. ""Actually, I didn't, despite how long I've worked here. Thank you, Vincent." She picked up the tray to carry to her office, shooting a reassuring smile over her shoulder.

~ ~ ~

Dr Brennan scanned herself into the elevated forensic platform, already pulling a pair of clean gloves out of her pocket before she had climbed the few stairs. Her intern had already laid out the bones in anatomical position on the examination table, as was expected of him. She took a long, slow look over the platform, analyzing, assessing the body, before finding her intern assigned to this case. He was just finishing a conversation with Miss Montenegro.

"Mr Nigel-Murray, what are your preliminary findings?" She called out to him, causing him to come squirreling back to the table where his real work was.

"Well, Dr Brennan, did you know that people who wear high heels when they shop at malls are less likely to make impulse buys?" He smiled.

"That is not relevant to our investigation."

"Right- of course. So. The cause of death is not yet known- there is no signs of blunt force trauma or sharp strike marks, but Dr Saroyan noted the strange bitter almond smell and took samples of the flesh and the remains of the organs to the autopsy room to see if there was a toxin in the victim's system. We uh- haven't had the chance to go over much more. The remains only arrived a short while ago." His eyes darted around, clearly unsure of himself.

Dr Brennan nodded, and scanned over the body, again. This time she vocalized her findings. "Victim appears to be male, mid to late 20s, about 6 feet tall. Likely of predominantly caucasian descent, most likely of mixed race. Mr Nigel-Murray, your observation about no visible blows to the body seems to be correct, however, it will be difficult to tell until the bones are clear. Clean the bones for me, then we can be more specific. You should have cleaned them all when the skull was cleaned." She gave one last long visual sweep of the body. "And see if Angela has finished her facial reconstruction. I'm going to go see Booth." 

As quickly as she had arrived, Dr Brennan walked off the platform again, walking quickly, and leaving a slightly defeated looking intern in her wake.

~ ~ ~

Dr Saroyan ran a hand through her hair before pulling on her gloves. It was always difficult dealing with remains, but something felt a little off here. Maybe it was because the body was dumped somewhere so easily accessible. It felt almost too planned out. Not to mention there was a faint... almond like smell? Most flesh smelled overwhelmingly like decay and faintly of their last meals. This was unusual. The almond smell was not diluted by stomach acid.

She had already taken a sample of flesh to put through the mass spectrometer, and it would probably be a few hours before any results came through. The flesh was all...blueish. The scraps of blood that were useable still seemed off in colour. Strange indeed. The sooner results came through, the sooner they could find answers.

~ ~ ~

Agent Booth rubbed a hand along his chin, having no leads on the body dump site whatsoever. Everyone had access to this mall, the mall usually left the dumpster wide open, and it was not even five minute walk from a large bus terminal. He felt a little bad for Angela, working with half a skull at the lab. She may be good as the rest of the squints, but it was going to be tough for her.

He lifted his head from his computer screen from a tap on the glass, and his partner let herself into his office. Without a hello, she simply relayed the information they had so far in the lab.

Booth leaned back in his chair and sighed. "So all you have is average height young white guy-"

"Mixed race, most likely. Half Caucasian," Dr Brennan interrupted.

"Fine. Half white guy. My suspect list is narrowed down to anyone who uses public transit or goes to this mall."

They shared a look of frustration, and Dr Brennan sat down to shoot an email to Angela.

~ ~ ~

Across the office, Angela's phone pinged. She ignored it. Any messages could wait. This was more important.

This facial reconstruction took far too much work, and she barely had anything to work with. All she had was deep set eyes, a high forehead, and round cheekbones. From what she could tell of his teeth, they were near perfect. Probably from braces as a kid.... and they worked. Probably terrible for the guys confidence. Would make sense why the teeth looked so well kept now. A faint smile crossed her face, remembering her own teenage years.

The tissue markers weren't helping much, it was half a face, almost. What if he had fuller cheeks... and heavier eyebrows? Brennan had said mostly caucasian, but it didn't seem right... Angela tweaked tissue markers, re- scanning. Brennan had been so brisk with her poor intern. Vincent craved validation so hard and she never seemed to provide it. Poor guy.

Across the room, the phone rang again- a video call. How annoying. She crossed her office from where the partial skull sat, to her large screen. She clicked 'answer' on the control tablet.

Booth's face filled the screen. At least he was a nice face to look at. Always so handsome….

"Hey, Angie." He flashed his unintentionally charming smile worn with working too hard, "Do you have anything?" He had the same look on his face as she felt, no leads or direction so far.

She let a faint smile cross her face. "Well, I was given less than half a skull, but this is all I have so far. I'm not quite as good as the brainiacs here." She quickly crossed the room, grabbed her sketch pad, and showed it to the video camera. "Brennan said caucasian, partly, but I think she may be wrong about that. I think it may be more than she said."

"I am never wrong," said a far too familiar voice off camera. Someone else may have bitten their tongue. Too bad for the person belonging to the voice that Angela had no issues challenging her. At least someone always kept Dr Brennan's ego in check.

Booth glanced to the side, to someone behind the camera, "Yeah you may want to check again there Angela. I'll run your sketch through missing persons, we will see what we can do. No promises though."

"Yeah, I'll let you know." With a weak smile, Angela ended the call. She turned back to the skull.

"Who were you?" She sighed softly, "And who tried to hurt you without hitting you, only to hide you in plain sight?"


	2. Results and Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Test results have returned, and the team has fewer answers than before.

The lab was very quiet. It was calm. It rarely fell this quiet. It was almost as though this wasn't the lab at all. Another world, maybe.

That was how it felt to Angela, at least, who had not realized it was almost 11 at night. Artist life, maybe?

The floor was littered with various sketches, variations of the same face. Or, rather, partial face. Each face only had a few features changed, but yet looked like someone else. Facial recognition software was very picky when it came to matching with missing persons database. Close enough didn't exist.

And yet, the artist was still sitting on her couch in her office, feet propped up with yet another variation of the same face forming under her pencil on paper.

A gentle tap on the doorframe made her jump. She looked up with wide, startled eyes, only to have the expression soften into a smile as she recognized the curly haired shape leaning on her doorframe. Anyone else probably would get a pencil thrown at their head for interrupting.

Dr Jack Hodgins shifted his weight off the doorframe and calmly walked up to the couch, hands in his pockets. It was endearing to watch him carefully step around the papers littering the floor.

"You know, they don't mean it literally when they say 'burning the midnight oil,'" He said, knowing all to well what it's like to stay late after work. The feeling was written in his face, really. The entomologist gently reached a hand out and brushed the hair away from his wife's face. "Figured you were still here when you didn't come home when your shift ended. Six hours ago." Nothing he hadn't done himself many times in the past.

With a defeated sigh, Angela dropped her sketch pad on the coffee table beside the incomplete skull. The sketch had, well, guesses of what the other side of the face looked like. Slightly different guesses than the other sketches. Still not the right guess. 

She glared for a moment at the face before dragging her eyes off of it and onto Hodgens. "I don't know anything about this guy. All I know is hes male, late 20s, half white. Brennan told me the other half was Latino, but needed more information before she could narrow it down. I got a face for the part of the skull I have, but nothing came up from just that in missing persons. Look at this, long face. Deep eyes. Do you know how many people fit that? I cant even finish his face shape because the chin is in pieces. I- I have nothing!" Her voice became more shrill and louder as she spoke, before breaking on the last word. She sighed again, this time showing much more frustration. She ran a hand through her hair, well aware it's probably already a mess.

Jack smiled, softly. "You don't need all the answers yet. I'll make sure Vincent reconstructs the skull for you tomorrow, and maybe Brennan will find some other markers on the body that will do your job for you." There was always a point in every investigation where it all waited in one person, and right now it seemed to rest on Angela. She never did well with that.

He reached out with both hands towards her face, cupping Angela's cheeks. "Why don't you come home, and in the morning I can make you coffee strong enough to wake the dead." He leaned forward to softly brush his lips against her forehead before stepping back. He held out one hand to help his wife up, and used his spare hand to grab her satchel off the couch for her. Hard to say no when you don't have your bag.

Angela smiled. "You make a very compelling argument." She chuckled, and laced her fingers into his own, standing up. "But only if you help me forget about work when we get home." Her calm smile turned wry, knowing her husband would know what she meant.

Hodgins echoed her chuckle. "Then I guess we better get home." He always knew what she meant.

He lead the two of them out of the building, hand in hand, passing some security guards who looked very relieved to be able to finally lock up.

~ ~ ~

The skull was almost in one piece again. Vincent Nigel-Murray had been in the lab for a few hours when he saw Angela and Dr Hodgins step onto the forensic platform. They both looked much happier than the night before, when they had no answers. As far as the intern knew, there was still no answers, but their optimism was evident.

Angela gave her usual warm smile to Vincent. "You're in awful early today!" 

Vincent nodded. "Well, you know, it is reported you get less distracted if you work when others are asleep."

"Maybe. But some of us like sleep more." With a smirk to Hodgins, she quickly kissed her husband on the cheek and went off to her office. He echoed her smirk as he watched his beautiful wife dissapear into her office.

Hodgins rushed up to Vincent, and firmly gripped him on the shoulders. "Thank youuuuu" he whispered to the intern, before quickly walking off to his section of the lab. No doubt to get results from his many tests that were run yesterday.

Vincent stared after Hodgins for a moment, before smfiling softyly and returning to his work. Surely Hodgins had been thanking him for reconstructing the skull. It was odd to receive a text message at 11:30 at night regarding work, but the skull was important. Dr Hodgins had not clarified why the skull was so important to him specifically, but everyone was aware that Angela was still working when everyone else had left for the night. Probably that was why Hodgins had been so urgent with the message.

On the opposite side of the platform, a timer chimed. The intern rushed over, pulling an examination table on wheels with him. He had put the bones in a large glass tank when he had arrived this morning, as well as some beetles that Dr Hodgins kept in a tank labeled 'for cleaning bones.' 

Just as the instructions on the tank promised, the beetles had nearly polished the bones in two hours. It was a guaranteed way to clean the bones and took less direct work than other methods. It looked like a few of the beetles had died in the tank, but that was normal, right? 

The intern sighed, not being the largest fan of bugs, and reached into the tank. Almost 200 bones was far too many for this. Far too many times to plunge his hands in with bugs. Stifling a shudder, it was time to work.

~ ~ ~

Dr Camille Saroyan walked onto the platform to see a squeamish- looking intern standing over an illuminated examination table, most of a skeleton laid out in anatomical position. The skull was on a glass tray beside the table. It was a deep relief to her that it looked like the dumpster had been relocated, most likely to Dr Hodgins' bug room. He could keep it.

"Mr Nigel-Murray. Good morning." She curtly nodded to the intern, impressed by how much he had completed already this morning. She would need to praise him for it later if Dr Brennan didn't. 

Vincent lifted his head. He looked, defeated maybe? A little queasy? All the same, he offered a weak smile. "Hello Dr Saroyan. I cleaned the bones and reassembled the skull. Angela hopefully will be able to give us a face." His eyes dropped to the body again, and he rested his gloved hands on the table, leaning into them as though they helped him stay upright.

Cam tilted her head slightly, a look of concern on her face. "Are you feeling alright? Its okay to take a day off you don't feel well." The possibly defeated look now was definitely nausea, and she didn't need a sick intern on her hands.

The intern's eyes widened. "No- no! I'm quite alright. I just used Hodgins' beetles to clean the bones and it was- unpleasant. Effective, but unpleasant."

A soft smile spread across his boss's face. "Very few of us are as fond of beetles as Dr Hodgins. If you need to, please don't hesitate to ask him to handle them for you. I know Brennan probably told you specifically to clean the bones, but she cares more that they're clean than if you're the one who does it. All the same, you did good work." She nodded to him and walked towards the autopsy room. Which doubled as her office.

~ ~ ~

A light was blinking on her computer screen as soon as De Saroyan logged on. Tox screen results were back and- they didn't make sense. There was dangerously high amounts of a benzene compound. As far as she knew, benzene compounds were always toxic. They also did not occur naturally in the body.

There was also very high levels of nitrogen in the body. Nitrogen occured naturally but this seemed too high to make sense.

The iron present in the body was in a different form than blood usually uses. It would be useless, if not toxic in itself.

And there was an extremely high level of adrenaline in the system.

It was an absolute mess of results, and made no sense. She clicked print on her computer. Maybe someone else will be able to understand it.

~ ~ ~  
There was a hesitant, almost shy knock on Miss Montenegro's door. Mr Nigel-Murray had completed the skull and was here to deliver it.

A wide, genuine smile came across Angela's face as the intern of the case walked into her office, complete skull on a tray in his hands. He walked very carefully, given how fragile the skull surely was. Good thing she had already cleaned up the littered papers from the floor.

"I was told you would like this." The intern gently put the skull down on the coffee table, smiled, and quickly walked out of the room. It was very common knowledge that Angela liked her space when she worked.

Angela sat down on her couch, and rotated the skull to face her. "I think its finally time to find out who you are."

~ ~ ~

At exactly 9 am, when the lab formally opened for the day, Dr Temperance Brennan scanned herself into the forensic platform, her FBI partner following behind her. It was uncommon for Agent Booth to come to the Jeffersonian Institution. Most likely, he was bored and impatient to begin his portion of the investigation. He was humming to himself, and looked around the rest of the team. His squints, as he oh so loved to call them. 

Dr Brennan pulled on some gloves from one of the many boxes around the platform, and told Booth not to touch anything, before he even had the opportunity to try. The agent threw his hands out to his sides, raising his eyebrows. Almost as if to say, I didn't do anyhing!

The forensic anthropologist did not acknowledge him. Her eyes were entirely on the skeleton. "Have you had the chance to catalogue the injuries, Mr Nigel-Murray?" 

Her intern gave her an uncertain sideways look, clearly worried he wasn't doing enough. "Well, no, I arrived early to reconstruct the skull for Angela and clean the bones. It seemed more important at this stage to have a face to our victim." He almost froze, looking down at the bones. He frantically scanned the bones, trying to determine which injuries would be the most pertinent.

Dr Brennan looked at the intern, and nodded. "Good work, Mr Nigel-Murray. I believe you made the right choice. We can catalogue injuries together. Tell me, which ones stand out to you the most right now?" Of course, she knew the answer, but that was not the point of having an intern if you gave them all the answers.

The intern visibly exhaled, finding incredible relief in the praise. "There is an incredible amount of injuries on this body. They appear to have occured continuously over the last five years or so, the most recent being these broken ribs, appearing to have occured 3 to 4 months ago." His eyes stayed glued to the bones, but his focus was actually on Dr Brennan in his peripheral vision.

Brennan lifted one of the central ribs, running a gloved thumb over the fracture. "I concur with your proposed timeline, however, this was most likely not a complete break. If you look closely here-" she moved the magnified camera over the centrepoint of the break, "-it appears to be more of a crack, from either falling on the side or having something dropped on the victim's ribcage. Since it was a few months ago, though, it was most likely not fatal. It will take a significant amount of time to catalogue all of these injuries, so I would like you to start immediately."

Agent Booth awkwardly clapped the intern on the back. "Focus on the big ones eh, squint?" Clearly uncomfortable on the platform, Booth walked towards the autopsy room, past a Hodgins who was clearly confused as to why Booth was on the platform, but all the same, had a job to do.

The bug lover made a beeline for the glass tank where his beetles had recently finished cleaning the bones. A look of horror crossed his face as he beheld the dead beetles on the bottom of the tank. There was not many, but surely any dead beetles were too many for an entomologist who had raised them.

"Vincent! My beetles! They were too young to die!" He did not turn around to look at the intern, but it was clear by his dead set focus he did not blame Vincent, simply called out to the intern because he had been handling them last.

"They must have ingested something from the body... yet another test to run...." his voice faded off as he used a pair of tweezers to pluck the dead beetles out of the tank one by one and into a dish. "Just another test to run that makes no sense..." he mumbled to himself.

Dr Brennan looked away from Hodgins and back to the skeleton in front of her. "We have a job to do, Mr Nigel-Murray." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small cassette recorder, and began to narrate the findings to date into it. Vincent rapidly wrote down his own findings as well. 

It would be far too many hours before they would be done this phase alone.

~ ~ ~

Agent Booth knocked on the doorframe of the autopsy room. Carefully, since Cam seemed to be very focused on whatever was on the screen. It was a coloured bar graph, with a few significantly higher bars. Nonsense to anyone who doesn't know the human body.

Cam startled, and almost stood up in her chair. It took a moment for her face to soften as she recognized Booth. "Oh, tox screen came back. And it makes no sense."

Booth walked over, and leaned over Cam's shoulder. "Well. To me, none of this makes any sense most of the time." He pointed to the nitrogen spike, moving his finger up and down on the spike, "what about this one? Isn't nitrogen good? The thing they add to food and such?"

Cam furrowed her brow at the screen. "Normally yes, but this is too much. Look at this," she pointed to the benzene spike, "it is almost as high, which makes me think it might be part of the same compound. But I can't tell yet. Look at this adrenaline spike here," she gestured to the spikes corresponding with epinephrine and norepinephrine, "His heart must have been racing when he died, must have been terrified. Levels this high... probably fighting for his life." She swiveled on her chair to face Booth. "He wasn't ready to die. He probably didn't accept the fact he was going to die. I don't know what he fought for, but..."

Booth gave his old friend a tight smile, and squeezed her shoulder. "We will figure it out." It was nice to have someone in the lab who didn't only see bones, and still saw a person behind it all.

Cam pushed back from the desk, and grabbed the paper from her printer. Odds are, Dr Hodgins or Mr Nigel-Murray would have theories about it. Their minds worked thay way, theories and ideas when theres not much to work off of.

Calming her face from frustration to collected boss, Dr Saroyan lead Agent Booth out of the autopsy room and back to the main portion of the forensic platform.

Results in hand, she put her free hand on her hip. "Alright, people, what do you have for me?" Her eyes looked to Dr Hodgins, and opened her mouth to share the tox screen results with him.

A rapid click click click cut Dr Saroyan off, and Angela was almost running in her heels, a pencil stuck in her hair, and her sketchbook in hand. The look on her face was one she only showed when she had solved something noone else had.

Without pausing to breathe, Angela threw her sketchbook down on the tray beside the examination table, right on top of the various tools Dr Brennan liked to keep on hand. A sharp looking tool clattered to the ground, but noone paid it any mind.

"I've identified the victim."


	3. Name and Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our victim is identified, and Agent Booth /finally/ gets to work
> 
> (Sorry it was late- life gets busy! But here is a little bit of the next couple scenes. I've also been struggling with character development some. But heres something!)

"I've identified the victim," the breathless artist said, the satisfaction almost visibly swelling in her chest, "His name is Liam Rivera. Age 26. Accountant, freelancing jobs. Reported missing by his girlfriend's business partner a week ago." She dropped the sketch on the computer desk, already having the basic details hastily written down on the edge of the page. A click on her tablet in her other hand, and the printer across the platform hummed to life and began to print.

Agent Booth leaned towards the sketch, clearly relieved to have something besides the corpse to focus on. "Barely more than a kid... do we have a next of kin?" 

Angela shrugged and gestured to the printer, where Booth reached for where a still warm printed missing persons form waited.

He scanned the paper quickly. "His emergency contact was listed as the girlfriend... she must be important then. And suspicious, since she didn't report him missing. I'll get Sweets and go talk to him." He spun around on his heel. Any quicker and it would have probably made his shoes squeal on the tediously polished floor. The agent wasn't even off the platform before he was dialing the number of the FBI profiler, most likely to tell Sweets to find the address by the time Booth arrived at the FBI building to pick him up. It was almost amusing how eagerly he tended to jump onto his side of the investigations. 

~ ~ ~

Agent Lance Sweets was poring over the emailed over missing persons report when Agent Booth opened the door to his office, without knocking. He never knocked.

"Agent Booth, there is a certain element of respect I would appreciate you to extend to my office. What if I had a client here?" Sweet's tone could be comparable to a teacher trying to teach a new concept.

Booth did not acknowledge the tone of voice. "We have to talk to the girlfriend. The fact she's the emergency contact as well as next of kin is odd, when they aren't married. And she didn't report him missing." 

With a tight, pursed expression, stifling another borderline scolding comment, Dr Sweets closed the file he was reading over. "The missing persons report doesn't say a whole lot. The details are vague in some spots and very specific in another. It also included a photo from a cell phone, as opposed to a driver's license photo. I suspect the person who filled it out was not in a clear state of mind, as though they filled it out immediately." With the faintest sigh, Lance Sweets picked up the file and lead Booth out the door. He handed over an index card with an address scrawled on it. "Place of work of the girlfriend. The website for it says she runs it alone, so I recon she will be there more than home. Garden shop of sorts, it says."

Booth barely looked at the address before picking up the pace. Field work was what he was good at, and it was about time.

~ ~ ~

As the two agents approached the address, they exchanged a look. The address was leading them to what looked more like an apartment duplex than a business. However.... this is where the GPS took them. Without a word, the two of them approached the door of the second half of the duplex. On the door, a homemade laminated sign read, "Wright Nursery." Doodles of various saplings and flowers dotted the edges of the sign.

Booth leaned to the side, trying to get a look in the window before knocking. The windows were covered by heavy foilage, and a pale white light glowed between the spaces in the leaves. Impossible to tell if anyone was home, despite how clean the window was. He furrowed his brow, and squared himself in front of the door again. Come what may.

Agent Booth reached out to knock on the door, Sweets smoothed out his suit. A few moments passed, and Booth rang the doorbell.

A gentle womans voice sounded off inside the house, though they couldn't make out the words. A heartbeat later, the door opened.

In the doorframe, a woman stood, one arm wrapped around a fragrant herb bush in a terracotta pot, the other hand with a spade hanging from it. There was a smudge of dirt across the side of her face, slightly caked on by sweat. Her mousey brown hair was tied back, save for one strand that was snagged in her mouth. She brushed that strand back from her face, sighing quickly, as though out of breath. "Yes?"

~ ~ ~


End file.
